I missed Jamie Stiehm’s analysis of Abraham Lincoln’s continuing — and apparently increasing — cultural significance when it appeared in the Baltimore Sun last month. But in PopPolitics efforts to be the main intersection where politics and pop culture meet, I thought it deserves a mention, however belated.

Inspired by the references from many of the presidential candidates — especially Obama when he officially announced his candidacy in Springfield, Ill. — Stiehm catalogs all the ways Lincoln still matters … and maintains an eerie influence:

“Problems seem intractable, like war, corruption, cynicism and the influence of money in politics,” [Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold] said.

But, Leopold said, such problems can be overcome by the sort of shrewd pragmatism Lincoln brought to his politics.

His military mettle remains so respected that Army Col. Kenneth O. McCreedy, installation commander at Fort Meade, keeps a 1864 Lincoln image as his screen saver.

“Lincoln resonates on so many levels, and in so many ways he’s our most human president,” said the colonel, who holds a doctorate in American history. “He had an uncanny ability to read people, with common sense and sophistication.”

[...]

[Harold Holzer, co-chairman of the Lincoln Bicentennial Commission] received so many questions about the war that he wrote an essay last year titled “What Lincoln would do in Iraq.”

He argued that Lincoln would advise the current president to spend more time at the front with troops, communicate more precisely about the war’s aims and fire appointed aides who fail in their missions — as Lincoln famously did with his battlefield commanders.

Well, I do recall George W. Bush making it onto an aircraft carrier at some point. Does that count?